Monday, July 4, 2011
Surprising Europe - Review and Interview
Film Review & Interview
Surprising Europe: The life and times of Ssuuna Golooba, directed by Rogier Kappers and produced by Jongens van de Wit, the Netherlands -- 70 mn documentary and 9-part TV series, 2011. http://www.surprisingeurope.com/
The history of humanity is also the story about migration. In the final analysis, we are all migrants. Central to my Yoruba people's philosophy on human migration are two of their proverbs. One is Omi ni eniyan; the second, Ibi ti aye ba gbeni de, la npe layede.
The first means that human beings are like water that flows wherever it can find its level. The second one means that it is where destination leads us that we call home.
It is probably the knowledge of these proverbs that informed many Africans to migrate to Europe to seek the proverbial green pasture. The natural instinct of every animal is to look for wherever the grass is greener. Europe, in recent history, emptied as much as a third of her population to other climes when the going got tough. It therefore remains incomprehensible to many African immigrants in Europe, why the continent that has benefited so much from migration, remains the most hostile to them.
Several thousand Africans have moved and settled in Europe. Some of them managed to build lives that are far better than what they left behind. But for the majority of these migrants, it has been tales of harrowing disappointments. For many of these profoundly disappointed Africans it is always a case of: "Had I known?"
Many of them had well-paying jobs in their countries with middle-class lifestyles and expectations. But human ambitions being what they are, they wanted more.
Images from Western media like BBC World and CNN are beamed into their living rooms, with commentators constantly harping on "rich" Western countries with out-of-this-world GNP, GDP, and other statistics that paint pictures of a paradisiacal West. The same media portrays Africa as a hopeless, war-torn, famine-overwhelmed, dictators-ridden continent that is forever begging to feed its lazy citizens.
Hollywood also lends hand with movies that show the bold and the beautiful who, with no apparent means of livelihood, tool around town in kilometer-long limousines, wining and dining the whole day with no apparent care in the world. Images are shown of people putting plastic cards into walls from which money gushes out. Ah, white people are magicians!
There are also the new missionaries on the block, those kind-hearted NGO folks who drive around in big 4-wheel-drive jeeps, hold endless conferences, and talk themselves silly on how to end poverty in Africa.
African immigrants who come on holidays and start spending money like it's going out of fashion also do not help matters.
These are the images Africans are bombarded with and who does not like better things? Determined to get his share of the wealth of Europe, the African quits his job, and sells whatever properties he had accumulated over his toiling years. Some sell the family jewels, houses, and even the farm. Occasionally, loans are contracted to embark on the journey to a supposed El Dorado.
Arriving in Europe, the immigrant is thrown into a severe culture shock from which he hardly ever recovers. The illusion that Europeans are nice and welcoming is the first to go.
In many parts of Africa, especially in the villages, total strangers are mostly welcome with huge smiles and a desire to help. The immigrant's first contact with Europe is with stony-faced immigration officers with the countenance of a wolfhound and the friendliness of a Gestapo. The confounded immigrant wonders what has happened to all those Europeans he saw in Africa with smiles pasted on their faces, as they trample around the continent looking for places to develop.
When he's finally admitted into the country after a bruising encounter at the port of entry, the senses of the poor immigrant are further assaulted when he finds out that he needed more than his expensive visa to even begin to settle down.
First, the small question of accommodation needs to be settled, and it becomes a major production when he's asked to produce a residence permit without which he cannot get legal accommodation. Our bewildered immigrant, who had a spacious apartment in his native land, is forced to make do with sleeping in other people's corridor.
readmore.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Namibian Land time-bomb
This piece was published in the Letter to the Editor section of the Pan African magazine, New African, July 2011 edition.
Kindly permit me space for this letter in reaction to your story: “The Trouble with Namibia,” NA June 2011, pp4- 44.
I must first thank you guys at the New African magazine for bringing us pertinent information about our beautiful continent.
I consider myself a little bit knowledgeable about African affairs, but your report on Namibia left me totally flummoxed.
I was (until I read your piece) a great admirer of former President Sam Nujoma whom I considered a great Liberation leader. I honestly thought he was more than populous beard and fiery revolutionary rhetoric until I read the type of agreement he signed in the name of independence.
Little wonder that these agreements are forever shrouded in great mystery.
We can contrast what happened in the colonies in Africa with what transpired after the second European Civil war when Germany was made to regurgitate everything she stole from her European colonies and also paid compensation. In Africa, they think that we should be satisfied with a flag and some wretched smiles!
With the editor’s permission, I shared an extract on my Facebook wall, and the flurry of traffic I received was rather gratifying, as they greatly opened my eyes to the happenings in that beautiful but sadly racially-stratified land.
I can only express my shock and sadness as I read the lamentations of many Namibians about how their people lost all during the German invasions and how, up till today, young German boys prevent them from visiting their ancestral graves to pay homage!
Fortunately, at least for me, this is not a situation we experienced in West Africa.
Having stayed in Europe where I did not see a single African owning even one square inch of European land, I cannot imagine how I will react to Europeans fencing hundred upon hundred square kilometers of my people’s land in the name of private property.
It is very sad and troubling to read the depth of pent-up anger among my Namibian Facebook contacts. In my humble opinion, the correct question to ask now is to whom are we doing a favour by pretending that all is jolly and well in Namibia? Truth has a way of emerging however hard they try to suppress it, and however long, injustices have ways of blowing up in the face of its perpetrators.
Do the Western agencies, organisations and governments that perpetrated and abetted this gross injustice hope that it will last forever? Do they really believe that Namibians will somehow just forget about their ancestral lands? Doesn’t Zimbabwe provide ample evidence on what will happen when we bury our heads in the sand and pretend not to understand that historic injustices need to be rectified?
Your report quoted a 'SWAPO intellectual' talking about the incapacity of the government to act. I got hold of the Namibian Constitution and I found these relevant sections the Namibian government could use to get its land back from the absentee landlords.
Article 16: Property
(1) All persons shall have the right in any part on Namibia to acquire, own and dispose of all forms of immovable and movable property individually or in association with others and to bequeath their property to their heirs or legatees: provided that Parliament may be legislation prohibit or regulate as it deems expedient the right to acquire property by persons who are not Namibian citizens.
(2) The State or a competent body or organ authorised by law may expropriate property in the public interest subject to the payment of just compensation, in accordance with requirements and procedures to be determined by Act of Parliament.
There is no government anywhere that can claim impotence when it comes to overriding public interests. If the new elite in Namibia will have the political will, I think they can do a lot to help their own people.
Laws are made by men and could be undone by man. Section 16:2 of the Namibian constitution empowers the government to act. If the occupiers refuse to play ball, the government, through parliament CAN and SHOULD enact legislation confiscate the land and pay the same compensation the land-owners claim that they paid.
Kindly permit me space for this letter in reaction to your story: “The Trouble with Namibia,” NA June 2011, pp4- 44.
I must first thank you guys at the New African magazine for bringing us pertinent information about our beautiful continent.
I consider myself a little bit knowledgeable about African affairs, but your report on Namibia left me totally flummoxed.
I was (until I read your piece) a great admirer of former President Sam Nujoma whom I considered a great Liberation leader. I honestly thought he was more than populous beard and fiery revolutionary rhetoric until I read the type of agreement he signed in the name of independence.
Little wonder that these agreements are forever shrouded in great mystery.
We can contrast what happened in the colonies in Africa with what transpired after the second European Civil war when Germany was made to regurgitate everything she stole from her European colonies and also paid compensation. In Africa, they think that we should be satisfied with a flag and some wretched smiles!
With the editor’s permission, I shared an extract on my Facebook wall, and the flurry of traffic I received was rather gratifying, as they greatly opened my eyes to the happenings in that beautiful but sadly racially-stratified land.
I can only express my shock and sadness as I read the lamentations of many Namibians about how their people lost all during the German invasions and how, up till today, young German boys prevent them from visiting their ancestral graves to pay homage!
Fortunately, at least for me, this is not a situation we experienced in West Africa.
Having stayed in Europe where I did not see a single African owning even one square inch of European land, I cannot imagine how I will react to Europeans fencing hundred upon hundred square kilometers of my people’s land in the name of private property.
It is very sad and troubling to read the depth of pent-up anger among my Namibian Facebook contacts. In my humble opinion, the correct question to ask now is to whom are we doing a favour by pretending that all is jolly and well in Namibia? Truth has a way of emerging however hard they try to suppress it, and however long, injustices have ways of blowing up in the face of its perpetrators.
Do the Western agencies, organisations and governments that perpetrated and abetted this gross injustice hope that it will last forever? Do they really believe that Namibians will somehow just forget about their ancestral lands? Doesn’t Zimbabwe provide ample evidence on what will happen when we bury our heads in the sand and pretend not to understand that historic injustices need to be rectified?
Your report quoted a 'SWAPO intellectual' talking about the incapacity of the government to act. I got hold of the Namibian Constitution and I found these relevant sections the Namibian government could use to get its land back from the absentee landlords.
Article 16: Property
(1) All persons shall have the right in any part on Namibia to acquire, own and dispose of all forms of immovable and movable property individually or in association with others and to bequeath their property to their heirs or legatees: provided that Parliament may be legislation prohibit or regulate as it deems expedient the right to acquire property by persons who are not Namibian citizens.
(2) The State or a competent body or organ authorised by law may expropriate property in the public interest subject to the payment of just compensation, in accordance with requirements and procedures to be determined by Act of Parliament.
There is no government anywhere that can claim impotence when it comes to overriding public interests. If the new elite in Namibia will have the political will, I think they can do a lot to help their own people.
Laws are made by men and could be undone by man. Section 16:2 of the Namibian constitution empowers the government to act. If the occupiers refuse to play ball, the government, through parliament CAN and SHOULD enact legislation confiscate the land and pay the same compensation the land-owners claim that they paid.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Interview with Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings
Amsterdam (22 May 2011)
Ghana’s former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings is one of the two leading members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDC) who have challenged incumbent President John Atta Mills for the party’s presidential slot for the 2012 elections.
Following a protracted internecine battle, Ghana’s ruling party announced that the party’s Congress will take place on 8 July 2011 at the Brong Ahafo capital, Sunyani. Although the congress will discuss other matters, election of the presidential candidate tops the list.
Former President John Jerry Rawlings, a man known for expressing his mind on national and international issues, however vexatious, led the attack on the leadership style of his chosen successor.
According to Mr. Rawlings, a former military strongman later turned civilian president, the performance of the Mills government betrays the hopes and the aspirations of party’s supporters, who worked assiduously to ensure that the party scraped a razor-thin victory in the 2008 elections – the margin of victory was just 40,000 votes!
President Rawlings partisans gave as example of incompetence the string of judicial defeats the Mills government has suffered, including the famous fiasco in the Ya-Na murder and the throwing out of all the corrupt cases the government has initiated against officials of the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
The rising cost of living, widespread corruption and the deteriorating state of water and electricity provision in the country are also cited as examples of the ineptitude of the Mills’ government.
President Mills supporters countered that his collegiate and non-combative leadership style is the best to build consensus and foster in a country that is highly polarized along ethnic religious and political lines. They argued further that rather than go on wholesale prosecution of former officials, they believe that their energies is best utilise to implement what they call their Better Ghana Agenda.
The quarrel, which was rumored for several months, finally blew open. Party supporters pitched camps with either Rawlings or Mills. Bitter accusations and insults were freely traded by NDC cadres who less than three years ago pride themselves as a united family of Akatosomanians (meaning?).
Ghanaians are not amused to watch their ruling party in such open disarray. They feel short-changed that a ruling party could expend so much energy in internal bickering whilst national problems cry for attention. They also worried about investors’ confidence in their fragile economy.
Attempts to reconcile the warring parties apparently failed as Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang- Rawlings resigned her Vice-Chairmanship position in the party, and went on to pick the presidential nomination form on 3 May 2011.
Three days later, President Mills partisans supporters pulled out all the stops as they escorted their candidate to the NDC office to pick his own form.
Traffic in the capital, Accra, was snarled up for hours as the president’s supporters turned the occasion into one giant street party.
Then followed a spectacle that would have brought tears of joy to the faces of die-hard communists of the old Soviet Union: In a performance broadcasted live on Ghana national television for six (6) hours, ministers of state and party hacks took turns to pledge fidelity to President Mills with many using the opportunity to castigate their party’s Founder, former president John Jerry Rawlings.
It was an unedifying spectacle and an expensive one at that. The GTV bill for the jamboree alone was reported to have cost GH₵18,000.
Nana Konadu was recently in Amsterdam to address a conference held on 21st May 2011 by the Amsterdam branch of the NDC dubbed ‘Ghana’s National Interest First.’
Femi Akomolafe met with her (on 22 May, 2011) to find out, among other things, the reasons for her seeking her party’s presidential mantle. Here is extract from the interview.
1. Thank you Nana for taking time from your busy schedule to talk with us. Can you tell us something about yourself?
Ans: I am Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, Ghana’s former First Lady and, hopefully, the next president of the republic of Ghana. I was born in the Ashanti Region of Ghana into a part of the very large Asante Royal family. It is a very extensive family.
2. In which part of Ghana did you grow up?
Ans: I grew up in various parts of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. My father worked with the United African Company (UAC) and he was constantly on the move. Naturally, we went along with him.
3. Given such an almost nomadic life, what type of upbringing did you have?
Ans: Ah! It was not such a nomadic as we stay a while in the places my father was posted. It was like we will stay a few years in a place, and then he will get posted again. To their credit, my parents did their very possible best to create normalcy in our family. I had the best parenting a child could ever hope for. And you must also remember that in almost all the places we lived, there were always sizable Ashanti communities, so it was not altogether totally alien environment. I felt no cultural alienation because there are always people around with whom I could relate.
4. What are some of the things you remember from your youth?
Ans: I remember quite a lot. I remember that our house was always full of people. My parents are always taking care of different kinds of people all the time – both family members and total strangers. Being relatively well-off entails a lot of social responsibility in our culture. At any given time, my parents were paying the school fees of several people, taken care of hospital bills of indigents, those sorts of things. My parents cannot stand the sight of suffering people. Of course, that imbued in us deep sense of empathy with the down-trodden. My parents made us realize that it was purely the circumstance of birth that made our own privileged position possible. It was a lesson you don’t forget.
5. You are a wife and mother; tell us something about your family life?
Ans: I have a very close family. I have a loving and a caring husband and we have children all of whom we love very dearly. I tried to create the same caring family I grew up in – loving, caring and with deep sense of responsibility and social justice. We care and we share.
6. Of course, you are the wife of the famous JJ. Your husband is many things to many people; what sort of husband and father is he?
In short a great man. It is difficult not to love my husband once you got to know him. He is a man with the deepest sense of social justice. He relates easily to people because he does not believe or care about all the things that divide people – ethnicity or tribalism. He is a totally detribalized person. He cares very deeply, perhaps too deeply about the common people. He’s also very unpretentious and is the most unmaterialistic person you can ever find. It gives me great joy when I travel across Ghana and see the tremendous affection the ordinary people have for him. Ask yourself, how many leaders in Africa, in the world, have the same touch with common people. He is equally well loved across Africa; wherever we go, the common people relate very well with him.
7. You and your husband seem to be very close, can you tell us the areas where you have differences of opinions and how you resolve them.
Ans: You don’t expect me to come and wash my family dirty linen in public (laughs). But seriously, Femi, we do have our differences but we discuss them like matured adults and we reach compromises. On the family level, he has ideas about how to bring the children up and I have mine. We sit down, consider the interests of the children and based our decisions on what we think is the best for them. On the political level, we share a lot in common. Ideologically, we are both appalled by the level of poverty we see around us and we always like to do something about it. We believe that people should be at the center of any development, be it social, economic or political.
8. Apart from your husband whom you obviously adore, which other people have inspired you; who are your role models?
Ans: My parents had the profoundest influence on me. I drew my inspiration from them. I remain grateful for the upbringing they gave me.
9. Your husband has the distinction of being Ghana’s longest-serving head of state, what to you are his most important legacies?
Ans: I don’t feel like blowing my husband’s trumpets; but his record in office clearly speaks volume for themselves. The best way to judge him is to compare the Ghana he met in 1978 and the Ghana he left in the year 2000. We should judge leaders by their accomplishments and on this, in fairness, he did very well. Whatever our political disagreements, people should not forget that in 1978, Ghana was a collapsed state; a laughing stock. By the time he left in 2000, the country has rebounded. Of course not all the problems were solved, but Ghana has regained its lost luster and Ghanaians were once again proud of their country. The economy has been transformed beyond recognition. Gone were the empty shelves, the unpaid workers, the queues for essentials, including for agbelemo (cassava dough). My husband left a Ghana that was consistently adjudged the least corrupt in West Africa. Those are very important legacies.
10. After almost twenty years in power, your husband is retired but appears not to be tired. He continues to make what many consider incendiary statements on national issues. Why do you think that he finds retirement a difficult thing to deal with like, say, former President Kufuor?
Ans: Of course, quiet retirement would have been the easy option. But you must try to recognize and appreciate the tremendous efforts invested in bringing the nation back from the brink. It was a titanic struggle and no one who participated would like the country to slide back into those bad old days. That explains why he occasionally voices his concerns. Naturally, because of the way he relates to the ordinary people, they came to him to voice their concerns about the direction the country is going, and he tries to articulate these frustrations. Initially he tried to use the party’s internal communication systems to voice his concerns, but no one listened to him.
That explains why he went public. If some things in the country are going terribly wrong, we do no one a favor by burying our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise. The country will pay very dearly if we do not collectively let our leaders know the true position of things. We have come a long way, and we should do our best not to allow the situation deteriorate to the bad old days.
11. Let’s move to your own politics; you recently announced your candidacy for your party, the National Democratic Party (NDC), presidential slot. To many people, this is an aberration. The question is why are you challenging an incumbent president who represents your own party?
Ans: Femi, this is among the most difficult decisions I ever took. We have to begin by understanding that in our system of government, people vote for political parties and not individuals. Since people are elected on the platforms of their parties, it is only right that they remain faithful to the party’s ideals and guiding philosophy.
Our party, the great National Democratic Congress (NDC) came from a social democratic tradition. Our philosophy is guided by a desire to represent the down-trodden and ensure that citizens are not deprived of a reasonable life because of the circumstances of their birth. You also have to note that the NDC came from a revolutionary background, so we frown heavily on corruption in both party and state affairs.
The people of Ghana voted for the NDC based on the programmes we presented to them. We promised to effect a recognizable change in the governance of the country. We promised to fight corruption among other things. The people trusted us and we should try not to betray that sacred trust.
It became quite clear soon after our party narrowly won the 2008 elections that the new leaders were deviating from the party’s core principles. We tried all possible best to solve them using the party’s internal organs. This was not possible. I thought I could help the party by contesting and winning one of the Vice-presidential slots, but unfortunately, party executives continue to be marginalized. Party matters were left unattended and there is a great deal of despondency among our rank and file. Every attempt to thrash out the intra-party disputes was thwarted.
For the first time in the history of this country, members of the ruling party were defecting to opposition party. Something has to be done.
12. There is also the question of dynastic rule being impose in Ghana. How would you counter this?
Ans: This question ought not to arise because I am standing on my own merits. I am touting my own accomplishments. I should be judged on my own merits.
13.Whichever spin we try to put on it, the internecine warfare is not a good advertisement for your party. Elections are less than two years away, do you think that you will manage to patch things up or is the NDC on self-destruct mode?
Ans: Sorry, but I don’t like that self-destruct word you used. The NDC was built on the foundation of trust, accountability, probity and social justice. These are principled ideals to which we expect members to adhere. The NDC is for all those that subscribe to its philosophy and believe in its publicly espoused ideals.
14. Politics in Ghana, or in Africa I should say, have been reduced to gutter levels where insults are freely traded, are you going to do things differently? What are the issues you are going to address in your campaign?
Ans: The politics of insults is alien to the NDC culture because we have always seen ourselves as a united family where every member is treated with the utmost respect. I have not traded insult with anyone and I am not going to do it. The issues at stake are far bigger than individual egos; they concern the fundamental values of our party and of our nation.
There is a great despondency not only in the party but across the country. We got elected because we promised people that we are going to do things differently; that we are going to stop the corruption and provide them with amenities to make decent living possible.
The people have not seen any improvement in their lives and there is massive corruption all over the place. As I speak to you, Accra is experiencing acute water shortages and the electricity situation has worsened. Our party members are bitterly complaining about the direction the party and the country is taking and no one listen to them. The party structure has collapsed from the constituency to the national level. Officials and ministers are today calling the foot-soldiers that got us elected nuisance.
15. We have a woman elected in Liberia; do you think that Ghana is prepared and ready for a woman president?
Ans: And why not, Femi?
16. Unlike Liberia, Ghana has a sizable Muslim population some of whom believe, rightly or wrongly, that women should not be leaders. How do you address their concern?
Ans: I honestly don’t believe that the issue of gender is something that should agitate us in this age and time. Islamic countries like Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan have all elected or appointed women into high positions, so why are we debating my gender in Ghana?
17. Apart from the gender card and the famous Rawlings name, what is Nana Konadu bringing to the table?
Ans: I am bringing my vast experience to the table (laugh). Femi, I have a track record that no Ghanaian politician, male or female, can match. No president or
Minister have visited more places in Ghana that me. I have been to every nook and corner of Ghana. Through our movement, we have directly impacted the lives of several Ghanaians than any other organization. Through thick and thin, we struggled against all odds to empower women throughout the land. I have had several occasions to meet and share ideas with the best brains in the world.
The President John Jerry Rawlings name is definitely big; but Nana Konadu is a woman of substance on her own.
18. Across Africa, people have become disillusioned because of the many unkempt promises by their politicians, what are you going to do differently?
Ans: Again, I will answer that our track records clearly shows that we could be different. Do you know what; wherever I go in Africa, people come to express their appreciation to how we managed to transform Ghana for the better.
We did it before and we clearly can do it again. I am not claiming exclusive credit for my husband and me, but we managed to assemble the best available brains in the country to help deliver quality services to the people.
We also make Ghanaians part of the development agenda. You see, part of the problem I see in Africa is that leaders sit in the capital cities and make big pronouncements about development. I think this is wrong – leaders should go to the people and get them involved in whatever developmental project is being implemented Any development plan that fails to carry the people along is bound to fail.
You don’t sit in Accra and plan projects for Walewale. No, you have to go the people of Walewale and sit down with them to draw up the plan. That is the only way you can bring the people on board. And once you fail to get them on board and make them part of the project, you will never get their full support. Of course, they will come and clap when you come around but they won’t feel that they are part of it. Don’t plan over people’s head.
19. Naturally, you are going to the Congress with the hope of winning, but in case you lose, would it be possible for you to make a volte face and ask your supporters to support a man you deemed and have called incompetent?
Ans: I don’t like hypothetical questions. But you should know that the easiest thing for me would have been to stay aloof and join the Chorus boys.
20. And in case you win, do you expect president Mills partisans to support you?
Ans: Again, I don’t see this as a personality contest. I expect loyal party members to support whoever emerges as the candidate.
21. Let’s suppose that you win your party’s congress and the national elections, what type of Nana Konadu presidency should we look forward to?
A presidency, in which Ghanaians will, once again, be very proud. A presidency that will fight corruption, ensure accountability and probity at every level of government. Mine will be a presidency that trusts Ghanaians enough to carry them along in all its developmental efforts. My presidency will strive to ensure that no child’s future is jeopardise by the circumstance of her birth. Mine will be a presidency that will promote and ensure social justice.
Ghana’s former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings is one of the two leading members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDC) who have challenged incumbent President John Atta Mills for the party’s presidential slot for the 2012 elections.
Following a protracted internecine battle, Ghana’s ruling party announced that the party’s Congress will take place on 8 July 2011 at the Brong Ahafo capital, Sunyani. Although the congress will discuss other matters, election of the presidential candidate tops the list.
Former President John Jerry Rawlings, a man known for expressing his mind on national and international issues, however vexatious, led the attack on the leadership style of his chosen successor.
According to Mr. Rawlings, a former military strongman later turned civilian president, the performance of the Mills government betrays the hopes and the aspirations of party’s supporters, who worked assiduously to ensure that the party scraped a razor-thin victory in the 2008 elections – the margin of victory was just 40,000 votes!
President Rawlings partisans gave as example of incompetence the string of judicial defeats the Mills government has suffered, including the famous fiasco in the Ya-Na murder and the throwing out of all the corrupt cases the government has initiated against officials of the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
The rising cost of living, widespread corruption and the deteriorating state of water and electricity provision in the country are also cited as examples of the ineptitude of the Mills’ government.
President Mills supporters countered that his collegiate and non-combative leadership style is the best to build consensus and foster in a country that is highly polarized along ethnic religious and political lines. They argued further that rather than go on wholesale prosecution of former officials, they believe that their energies is best utilise to implement what they call their Better Ghana Agenda.
The quarrel, which was rumored for several months, finally blew open. Party supporters pitched camps with either Rawlings or Mills. Bitter accusations and insults were freely traded by NDC cadres who less than three years ago pride themselves as a united family of Akatosomanians (meaning?).
Ghanaians are not amused to watch their ruling party in such open disarray. They feel short-changed that a ruling party could expend so much energy in internal bickering whilst national problems cry for attention. They also worried about investors’ confidence in their fragile economy.
Attempts to reconcile the warring parties apparently failed as Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyemang- Rawlings resigned her Vice-Chairmanship position in the party, and went on to pick the presidential nomination form on 3 May 2011.
Three days later, President Mills partisans supporters pulled out all the stops as they escorted their candidate to the NDC office to pick his own form.
Traffic in the capital, Accra, was snarled up for hours as the president’s supporters turned the occasion into one giant street party.
Then followed a spectacle that would have brought tears of joy to the faces of die-hard communists of the old Soviet Union: In a performance broadcasted live on Ghana national television for six (6) hours, ministers of state and party hacks took turns to pledge fidelity to President Mills with many using the opportunity to castigate their party’s Founder, former president John Jerry Rawlings.
It was an unedifying spectacle and an expensive one at that. The GTV bill for the jamboree alone was reported to have cost GH₵18,000.
Nana Konadu was recently in Amsterdam to address a conference held on 21st May 2011 by the Amsterdam branch of the NDC dubbed ‘Ghana’s National Interest First.’
Femi Akomolafe met with her (on 22 May, 2011) to find out, among other things, the reasons for her seeking her party’s presidential mantle. Here is extract from the interview.
1. Thank you Nana for taking time from your busy schedule to talk with us. Can you tell us something about yourself?
Ans: I am Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, Ghana’s former First Lady and, hopefully, the next president of the republic of Ghana. I was born in the Ashanti Region of Ghana into a part of the very large Asante Royal family. It is a very extensive family.
2. In which part of Ghana did you grow up?
Ans: I grew up in various parts of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. My father worked with the United African Company (UAC) and he was constantly on the move. Naturally, we went along with him.
3. Given such an almost nomadic life, what type of upbringing did you have?
Ans: Ah! It was not such a nomadic as we stay a while in the places my father was posted. It was like we will stay a few years in a place, and then he will get posted again. To their credit, my parents did their very possible best to create normalcy in our family. I had the best parenting a child could ever hope for. And you must also remember that in almost all the places we lived, there were always sizable Ashanti communities, so it was not altogether totally alien environment. I felt no cultural alienation because there are always people around with whom I could relate.
4. What are some of the things you remember from your youth?
Ans: I remember quite a lot. I remember that our house was always full of people. My parents are always taking care of different kinds of people all the time – both family members and total strangers. Being relatively well-off entails a lot of social responsibility in our culture. At any given time, my parents were paying the school fees of several people, taken care of hospital bills of indigents, those sorts of things. My parents cannot stand the sight of suffering people. Of course, that imbued in us deep sense of empathy with the down-trodden. My parents made us realize that it was purely the circumstance of birth that made our own privileged position possible. It was a lesson you don’t forget.
5. You are a wife and mother; tell us something about your family life?
Ans: I have a very close family. I have a loving and a caring husband and we have children all of whom we love very dearly. I tried to create the same caring family I grew up in – loving, caring and with deep sense of responsibility and social justice. We care and we share.
6. Of course, you are the wife of the famous JJ. Your husband is many things to many people; what sort of husband and father is he?
In short a great man. It is difficult not to love my husband once you got to know him. He is a man with the deepest sense of social justice. He relates easily to people because he does not believe or care about all the things that divide people – ethnicity or tribalism. He is a totally detribalized person. He cares very deeply, perhaps too deeply about the common people. He’s also very unpretentious and is the most unmaterialistic person you can ever find. It gives me great joy when I travel across Ghana and see the tremendous affection the ordinary people have for him. Ask yourself, how many leaders in Africa, in the world, have the same touch with common people. He is equally well loved across Africa; wherever we go, the common people relate very well with him.
7. You and your husband seem to be very close, can you tell us the areas where you have differences of opinions and how you resolve them.
Ans: You don’t expect me to come and wash my family dirty linen in public (laughs). But seriously, Femi, we do have our differences but we discuss them like matured adults and we reach compromises. On the family level, he has ideas about how to bring the children up and I have mine. We sit down, consider the interests of the children and based our decisions on what we think is the best for them. On the political level, we share a lot in common. Ideologically, we are both appalled by the level of poverty we see around us and we always like to do something about it. We believe that people should be at the center of any development, be it social, economic or political.
8. Apart from your husband whom you obviously adore, which other people have inspired you; who are your role models?
Ans: My parents had the profoundest influence on me. I drew my inspiration from them. I remain grateful for the upbringing they gave me.
9. Your husband has the distinction of being Ghana’s longest-serving head of state, what to you are his most important legacies?
Ans: I don’t feel like blowing my husband’s trumpets; but his record in office clearly speaks volume for themselves. The best way to judge him is to compare the Ghana he met in 1978 and the Ghana he left in the year 2000. We should judge leaders by their accomplishments and on this, in fairness, he did very well. Whatever our political disagreements, people should not forget that in 1978, Ghana was a collapsed state; a laughing stock. By the time he left in 2000, the country has rebounded. Of course not all the problems were solved, but Ghana has regained its lost luster and Ghanaians were once again proud of their country. The economy has been transformed beyond recognition. Gone were the empty shelves, the unpaid workers, the queues for essentials, including for agbelemo (cassava dough). My husband left a Ghana that was consistently adjudged the least corrupt in West Africa. Those are very important legacies.
10. After almost twenty years in power, your husband is retired but appears not to be tired. He continues to make what many consider incendiary statements on national issues. Why do you think that he finds retirement a difficult thing to deal with like, say, former President Kufuor?
Ans: Of course, quiet retirement would have been the easy option. But you must try to recognize and appreciate the tremendous efforts invested in bringing the nation back from the brink. It was a titanic struggle and no one who participated would like the country to slide back into those bad old days. That explains why he occasionally voices his concerns. Naturally, because of the way he relates to the ordinary people, they came to him to voice their concerns about the direction the country is going, and he tries to articulate these frustrations. Initially he tried to use the party’s internal communication systems to voice his concerns, but no one listened to him.
That explains why he went public. If some things in the country are going terribly wrong, we do no one a favor by burying our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise. The country will pay very dearly if we do not collectively let our leaders know the true position of things. We have come a long way, and we should do our best not to allow the situation deteriorate to the bad old days.
11. Let’s move to your own politics; you recently announced your candidacy for your party, the National Democratic Party (NDC), presidential slot. To many people, this is an aberration. The question is why are you challenging an incumbent president who represents your own party?
Ans: Femi, this is among the most difficult decisions I ever took. We have to begin by understanding that in our system of government, people vote for political parties and not individuals. Since people are elected on the platforms of their parties, it is only right that they remain faithful to the party’s ideals and guiding philosophy.
Our party, the great National Democratic Congress (NDC) came from a social democratic tradition. Our philosophy is guided by a desire to represent the down-trodden and ensure that citizens are not deprived of a reasonable life because of the circumstances of their birth. You also have to note that the NDC came from a revolutionary background, so we frown heavily on corruption in both party and state affairs.
The people of Ghana voted for the NDC based on the programmes we presented to them. We promised to effect a recognizable change in the governance of the country. We promised to fight corruption among other things. The people trusted us and we should try not to betray that sacred trust.
It became quite clear soon after our party narrowly won the 2008 elections that the new leaders were deviating from the party’s core principles. We tried all possible best to solve them using the party’s internal organs. This was not possible. I thought I could help the party by contesting and winning one of the Vice-presidential slots, but unfortunately, party executives continue to be marginalized. Party matters were left unattended and there is a great deal of despondency among our rank and file. Every attempt to thrash out the intra-party disputes was thwarted.
For the first time in the history of this country, members of the ruling party were defecting to opposition party. Something has to be done.
12. There is also the question of dynastic rule being impose in Ghana. How would you counter this?
Ans: This question ought not to arise because I am standing on my own merits. I am touting my own accomplishments. I should be judged on my own merits.
13.Whichever spin we try to put on it, the internecine warfare is not a good advertisement for your party. Elections are less than two years away, do you think that you will manage to patch things up or is the NDC on self-destruct mode?
Ans: Sorry, but I don’t like that self-destruct word you used. The NDC was built on the foundation of trust, accountability, probity and social justice. These are principled ideals to which we expect members to adhere. The NDC is for all those that subscribe to its philosophy and believe in its publicly espoused ideals.
14. Politics in Ghana, or in Africa I should say, have been reduced to gutter levels where insults are freely traded, are you going to do things differently? What are the issues you are going to address in your campaign?
Ans: The politics of insults is alien to the NDC culture because we have always seen ourselves as a united family where every member is treated with the utmost respect. I have not traded insult with anyone and I am not going to do it. The issues at stake are far bigger than individual egos; they concern the fundamental values of our party and of our nation.
There is a great despondency not only in the party but across the country. We got elected because we promised people that we are going to do things differently; that we are going to stop the corruption and provide them with amenities to make decent living possible.
The people have not seen any improvement in their lives and there is massive corruption all over the place. As I speak to you, Accra is experiencing acute water shortages and the electricity situation has worsened. Our party members are bitterly complaining about the direction the party and the country is taking and no one listen to them. The party structure has collapsed from the constituency to the national level. Officials and ministers are today calling the foot-soldiers that got us elected nuisance.
15. We have a woman elected in Liberia; do you think that Ghana is prepared and ready for a woman president?
Ans: And why not, Femi?
16. Unlike Liberia, Ghana has a sizable Muslim population some of whom believe, rightly or wrongly, that women should not be leaders. How do you address their concern?
Ans: I honestly don’t believe that the issue of gender is something that should agitate us in this age and time. Islamic countries like Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan have all elected or appointed women into high positions, so why are we debating my gender in Ghana?
17. Apart from the gender card and the famous Rawlings name, what is Nana Konadu bringing to the table?
Ans: I am bringing my vast experience to the table (laugh). Femi, I have a track record that no Ghanaian politician, male or female, can match. No president or
Minister have visited more places in Ghana that me. I have been to every nook and corner of Ghana. Through our movement, we have directly impacted the lives of several Ghanaians than any other organization. Through thick and thin, we struggled against all odds to empower women throughout the land. I have had several occasions to meet and share ideas with the best brains in the world.
The President John Jerry Rawlings name is definitely big; but Nana Konadu is a woman of substance on her own.
18. Across Africa, people have become disillusioned because of the many unkempt promises by their politicians, what are you going to do differently?
Ans: Again, I will answer that our track records clearly shows that we could be different. Do you know what; wherever I go in Africa, people come to express their appreciation to how we managed to transform Ghana for the better.
We did it before and we clearly can do it again. I am not claiming exclusive credit for my husband and me, but we managed to assemble the best available brains in the country to help deliver quality services to the people.
We also make Ghanaians part of the development agenda. You see, part of the problem I see in Africa is that leaders sit in the capital cities and make big pronouncements about development. I think this is wrong – leaders should go to the people and get them involved in whatever developmental project is being implemented Any development plan that fails to carry the people along is bound to fail.
You don’t sit in Accra and plan projects for Walewale. No, you have to go the people of Walewale and sit down with them to draw up the plan. That is the only way you can bring the people on board. And once you fail to get them on board and make them part of the project, you will never get their full support. Of course, they will come and clap when you come around but they won’t feel that they are part of it. Don’t plan over people’s head.
19. Naturally, you are going to the Congress with the hope of winning, but in case you lose, would it be possible for you to make a volte face and ask your supporters to support a man you deemed and have called incompetent?
Ans: I don’t like hypothetical questions. But you should know that the easiest thing for me would have been to stay aloof and join the Chorus boys.
20. And in case you win, do you expect president Mills partisans to support you?
Ans: Again, I don’t see this as a personality contest. I expect loyal party members to support whoever emerges as the candidate.
21. Let’s suppose that you win your party’s congress and the national elections, what type of Nana Konadu presidency should we look forward to?
A presidency, in which Ghanaians will, once again, be very proud. A presidency that will fight corruption, ensure accountability and probity at every level of government. Mine will be a presidency that trusts Ghanaians enough to carry them along in all its developmental efforts. My presidency will strive to ensure that no child’s future is jeopardise by the circumstance of her birth. Mine will be a presidency that will promote and ensure social justice.
Monday, June 6, 2011
On Party And National Interests
We in Africa lend great credence to the saying that new converts make the worst zealots. We appear to do nothing but take foreign ideas we barely understood, copy them blindly, use and abuse them, and turn ourselves into grotesque caricatures. Little wonder we are the laughing stock of the world.
Let us take this Christianity thing as an example. Starving Europeans, escaping hunger, left their desolate, god-forsaken icy abodes to invade our land. They brought with them their brand of religion and the book they claim their god wrote for them. Although we find their notion of god at variance with our own conception, they managed to persuade some of our folks to embrace their faith.
After much struggle, political agitation, and open warfare, the Europeans finally left for their shores.
Fifty some years later, a European visiting our land will barely recognize the Christianity that our people practice as the same one that he introduced to us.
In his country, the European knows that people go to church only on Sundays. And on that day, they spend only about one hour in service and go back to their homes until the following Sunday. Even on that day of worship, the churches in Europe are quiet, the service a somber affair to afford people the opportunity to commune silently and directly with their god.
A European that went to the streets of Europe to make noise about his god would be deemed insane and consigned to a lunatic asylum. No European, in his right senses, would disturb his neighbor because he wants to praise his god.
The European will be confounded to see that in Africa we practically live in churches nowadays. There is a church of one description or the other in every square meter of Africa.
African Christians believe that national laws are of no significance when it comes to worshipping their new god. Laws on not establishing churches in residential areas are flouted with impunity. Ordinances against street worship or conducting religious services in public transport are broken with abandon. Church services in Africa have become giant noise-making affairs where laws and orders are broken willfully as men and women profess their version of piety.
Christianity is everywhere on our beloved continent -- in the churches, homes, streets, markets, farms. No place is spared in the new business of Christian evangelism sweeping across Africa.
No bus leaves a station until a Christian prayer is said. Shouts of "Thank you, Jesus," fill the air as planes touch down on our tarmacs. Today, no state occasion takes place until a Christian priest invokes the blessings of his god.
readmore.
Let us take this Christianity thing as an example. Starving Europeans, escaping hunger, left their desolate, god-forsaken icy abodes to invade our land. They brought with them their brand of religion and the book they claim their god wrote for them. Although we find their notion of god at variance with our own conception, they managed to persuade some of our folks to embrace their faith.
After much struggle, political agitation, and open warfare, the Europeans finally left for their shores.
Fifty some years later, a European visiting our land will barely recognize the Christianity that our people practice as the same one that he introduced to us.
In his country, the European knows that people go to church only on Sundays. And on that day, they spend only about one hour in service and go back to their homes until the following Sunday. Even on that day of worship, the churches in Europe are quiet, the service a somber affair to afford people the opportunity to commune silently and directly with their god.
A European that went to the streets of Europe to make noise about his god would be deemed insane and consigned to a lunatic asylum. No European, in his right senses, would disturb his neighbor because he wants to praise his god.
The European will be confounded to see that in Africa we practically live in churches nowadays. There is a church of one description or the other in every square meter of Africa.
African Christians believe that national laws are of no significance when it comes to worshipping their new god. Laws on not establishing churches in residential areas are flouted with impunity. Ordinances against street worship or conducting religious services in public transport are broken with abandon. Church services in Africa have become giant noise-making affairs where laws and orders are broken willfully as men and women profess their version of piety.
Christianity is everywhere on our beloved continent -- in the churches, homes, streets, markets, farms. No place is spared in the new business of Christian evangelism sweeping across Africa.
No bus leaves a station until a Christian prayer is said. Shouts of "Thank you, Jesus," fill the air as planes touch down on our tarmacs. Today, no state occasion takes place until a Christian priest invokes the blessings of his god.
readmore.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Miss Ghana 20xx
It was a hot, very hot and breezeless November noon. The great African sun hung in the cloudless sky as though in great anger. Its needlelike rays cut through the atmosphere with effortless ease to sear my skin. It was hot, very hot. I perspired intensely. The air was balmy; there was no breeze - the leaves were stilled as though in great mourning. It was one of those hot, windless afternoons when the heavens seem prepared to choke lives out of terrestrial mortals.
I sat at my usual spot, nursing a cold larger. By this time of the day, the No 1 Spot at Osu is just waking up to life. Clientele were coming and going in ones and twos. A well-graffittied bus disgorged a horde of European tourists. They must have traveled long distances for they were dirty, unkempt, shaggy and waggy. The seats of their trousers, mostly jeans, were browned from grime from far and wide. The men wore week-old beards and the women among them were disheveled, their hair hung on them without style. They giggled loudly, animatedly as though sharing a great joke.
The blue car raced up to the parking lot, Accra dust following in its wake. It screeched to a dramatic stop, millimeters away from the plank barriers. The driver was either showing-off or s\he knew his\her onions well. The door flew open, and a tall, bony lady scrambled out and melodramatically kicked the door shut. She raced to the bar, her populous hair, made up in the style of Whitney Houston when drug has not ravaged her life, flying. From the bar, she collected a glass of what looked like, from where I was sitting, Campari or Mandigo and a bottle of Soda. She made straight for the empty seat beside mine, the hard soles of her shoes abrading the dry ground. The scent of her expensive perfume wafted into my nostril - it had the fragrance of cherries.
"Can I take the seat?" She purred, looking at my face directly while pointing to the empty chair.
“You may." I replied, meeting her very steady gaze.
"Thank you." She crooned. She sat down, taking time to brush the seats of her dress. She mixed her drinks and took a long draught. Placing the glass down, she breathed very deeply, Yoga-style, and apparently felt better. She swept her populous hair back in a deliberate, almost sensuous movement. Although, she cannot exactly be described as crunchingly beautiful, she's nice looking and looked well polished. In the parlance of the fashion-industry, I think she'll be called a sophisticate. She has a slender, almost delicate physique, very flat buttocks, and a long face. Her small breasts were straining against the tight, chic dress she wore.
“Feeling better?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.
“Wow!” She intoned. “I had a thirst that would kill a donkey. Sorry, that phrase is overused, but I cannot come up with a better one.” She pouted her mouth, eye-lashes flashing. She was really over-made-up. Her face was like a rainbow - painted in different colors and shades. And I will be damned if she’s wasn’t flirting very openly.
“Nice wagon.” I said pointing to the car.
She smiled shyly, “Thank you. It’s a prize.” She added as an afterthought.
My interest in the lady was re-kindled. I gaped at her anew. I beckoned to a passing waiter pointing to my empty glass. He gave me a chauvinistic stare and went to an Arab, beefy and hairy like a pig. I ignored the slight.
“A Prize?” I wondered.
She smiled another of her airline-hostess smiles. “Miss Ghana.” She proclaimed watching my face for the inevitable shock.
I kept my face straight, “To what do I owe the privilege of hosting the most beautiful woman in Ghana?”
If she wasn’t so over-processed, the smile would have been Epicurean. “Point of correction, or of order as they say, you’re not hosting me. I paid for my own drink,” She accused, “Secondly, I do not believe in throwing my weight around.” She found herself witty and laughed.
The 007 driving style. The false smiles. The make-up that will fill the faces of many street-walkers, and she doesn’t believe in throwing her weight around. I decided to aggravate her.
“How does it feel to be the most beautiful damsel in Ghana?”
Another skittish smile. A dab at her psychedelic face. “By HIS grace, it is now handleable (sic). It was difficult to cope at the beginning. What with all the attentions! The press, the journalists, the TV lights, the dinner parties, the charity balls, the various visits to this and that do, the family pressures, the peer jealousies, the bad-wishers, the hanger-ons, the loafers who would like to take to take advantage. Not to mention the uncountable Valentines. The beginning was really, really difficult. Thank God, it is now copeable (sic). I can go on, but I will only bore you. I guess you’ve better things to do than listen to the wailing of a Beauty Queen. ”
“Try me.” I urged her on.
She called a passing waitress. My companion was either not well-known or not a regular, the service girl gave an insolent look before ambling to our table. Her tray held in front of her, she hovered over us like an Ijesa debt-collector. She ordered Campari and Soda. The steward was still engaged with the Arab. I asked the service-girl to bring a drink for me. I offered to pay, my table-mate refused, “Let’s go Dutch: You pay yours, I pay mine.”
“How did you get into the Beauty business?”
She laughed. “You made it sound so, how should I put it, lewd?”
“I’m sorry, but my English vocabulary is rather limited. Were you a professional model?”
“My God, no! I was, sorry, I am a student.”
“A student!” I was genuinely shocked.
“You may it sounds so awful. Yes, I was a student. Pedagogy and Child-Psychology. I came into the, I guess I’ve to borrow your expression, ‘Beauty Business’ by accident. I just entered for the fun of it. Imagine my astonishment when I was selected. The biggest trouble now is how to go back to the campus and become an ordinary student again. My term is almost over.”
“Are you regretting it?”
“Hell, no. Sorry, I guess that it is rather un-lady, rude thing to say. No, I don’t regret it one bit. I am having great fun. It has been a tremendous pleasure.” She took her drink from the waitress, mixed and took a sip.
“Pleasure, “ I repeated. ‘Are you happy? There is a big difference between happiness and pleasure.”
“And I thought I was the pedagogue, or should I say the Pedantic.” She found humor in her sarcasm.”
“Beauty doesn’t last forever; knowledge is eternal.”
“You are a nut case.” She seemed genuinely horror-stricken by my presence.
“How so?”
“Most men would be dreaming about how to jump into bed with me, here you are philosophizing about my future. Your concern for my welfare is appreciated, really. You don’t imagine I get to where I am without been able to take care of myself, do you?”
She’s a good actress. No one watching us would imagine her volcanic eruptions. She kept her voice low, her arms swaying as though emphasizing important points.
“There’s more to life than horizontal jogging, aka sex. No, I am not imagining anything. I am just wondering why an intelligent woman will throw away a chance to get a good education for the transient pleasure of pretending to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana.”
She looked as though I’d slapped her. “Pretending.” She cried. “I am not pretending. I won it fair and square.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“I won’t cry.”
“Do you honestly believe yourself to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana. Pretense aside.”
“Pretense,“ she howled like an affronted Imam. “Why do you think that I am pretending? There was a contest and the experts say that I am the most beautiful girl. What have you got against that?”
“The experts,” I sneered. “What makes them the experts?”
“You seemed to be a supreme cynic. If they are not experts, how do they get into conducting the show. How do they get on TV and the newspapers. God, I won the contest fair and square. How dare you?”
“Getting on the TV or into the papers does not an expert make. What qualifies your experts to judge beauty - a most subjective thing in the world? What conceited egos moved your experts to declaring themselves the Solomons of Beauty Contests?”
“Why are you trying to aggravate me? If you are a woman, I’d say that you’re jealous.”
“Aggravating you is not what is on my mind. The whole system stinks, that’s what is getting my goat. See,” I bellowed, shaking with Yoruba emotions. “What’s exacerbating me is the whole gamut called Miss Ghana Show. Don’t take it personal, my dear. I have nothing against you personally. I am grinding an ax against those stupid jackets-and-ties with their moribund colonial mentality. Those who are perpetually under the tutelage of the Aryan Masters. Those who will sell their souls for dollars. Those dirty old men who runs the show are the people vexing me. Dirty old men who should be in bed with their wives staying up night to watch, admire and pass judgments on the legs and buttocks of girls young enough to be their grand-daughters. They and those cultural imperialists, those grinning Aryan bastards whose White Supremacists heads are filled with the notion that any stupid European idea should be universalized. Those colonial tricksters hell-bent on polluting the world with Euro-junks. I blame you not, my dear. You are just a victim, like the rest of us.
“Look,” I cried. Of course, she was looking. “It is not enough for the European to mis-educate us, he has to tell us who our gods are. He has taken it upon himself to lecture us on what political, economic and social systems are good for us. He now has taken over the function of determining for us what our notion of beauty should be. As in everything, the clever Aryan has chosen an image that best approximate himself. Our Jesus must be white. Our socio-political system must be Western. Look at you, the whiteman has decreed that our Beauty Queens must be those who look anything but Africans. You have bleached your skin, your figure is skeletal, you’ve got no backyard - to use our street expression. In fact, were you a fossil, no archaeologist will classify you a Black woman. And on your head has been placed the crown of our Beauty Queen. And your head is swelling with vain-pride. Instead of staying with your studies, you abandoned it to turn yourself into a whore. Whoring with the high and the mighty. What future do you see for yourself, ask those who had gone before you? Of course, they have to justify themselves, the rogues. They have to justify the gigantic fraud they call Miss Ghana Show. They threw you a car, made you attend endless parties, get you into radio stations, put you on the TV, made you smile like a cheap whore and your head is swaying with vanity. Why don’t you look around you? When it comes to beauty, I mean real beauty, however biased our opinions might be, do you think that you can hold a candle to the waitress over there?“ I asked, pointing to the girl who served us drink. The service girl saw us looking at her, said something silently and looked down.
Miss Ghana was astounded. Her face burned with fury. “Perhaps, your daughter or your girl-friend lost the contest. That’s the only thing that could explain your unbridled antagonism. I thought I was with a gentleman. Fancy the put-downs. I didn’t sit down with you in order to allow myself to be insulted like some street-walker. I am not a trollop.”
I was undaunted. My Yoruba blood, incensed by the burning heat and the haughty Beauty Queen, was boiling with rage. I met her gaze with gaze, matched her anger with anger. I was angered by her supercilious manners and was determined to provoke her further. “Me, jealous” I cried. The waitress cut the drift that things were not all jolly with us and ambled closer. She needed some gist to make the gossip circuits. I said nothing to discourage her. “I cherish intelligence far above good looks. I will not be caught dead with a woman stupid enough to participate in that vapid pageant. I will not have a daughter who feels herself justified by some dirty old men. No daughter of mine will expose herself to such public ridicule for the sake of being declared a Beauty by some lubricious, moronic old-men, however long their ties. No daughter of mine will dress up in those filthy, flimsy rags and sauntered up and down, shaking her ass like a low-priced quean to be admire by some mindless, unprincipled, amoral, wanton, coarse, unconscionable sugar-daddies who has lost all claims to human decency. No daughter of mine will have a need for the stamp of approval from some low-keyed, depraved, immoral parent who have time for such debauched, decadent affairs. No offspring of mine will have time for ancient sexual-perverts. I will not sire a daughter who will choose prostitution over a good education. I will have no daughter who will have such low-opinion of herself that what some morally-bankrupt and spiritually-decadent old men think will count for anything with her. I’d like to be the proud father of a daughter who knows that what is in her head is worth more than good looks. You know what is getting my goat?” I asked Miss Ghana.
She gave me a withering look, threw a dirty look at the waitress who ambulated away quietly. “I thought you were never going to stop your insults.”
“What’s is irksome is that otherwise intelligent ladies like yourself, on whom parents and society has expended so much energies, financial and otherwise, should allow themselves to be bamboozled by cheap vain-glories and all the show-biz glitters to abandon their studies. Once again, the whiteman has succeeded in turning Africans into a caricature of himself. Have you read ‘Soul on Ice?’
Miss Ghana pouted her mouth, “No. Why?”
“I was just reminded of what Eldridge Cleaver wrote about the white man and his woman. The white man is launching an assault to turn our women into what he’s made of his own woman.”
“And that is?”
“According to Cleaver, ‘The white man has turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot and place her on a pedestal.’”
I sat at my usual spot, nursing a cold larger. By this time of the day, the No 1 Spot at Osu is just waking up to life. Clientele were coming and going in ones and twos. A well-graffittied bus disgorged a horde of European tourists. They must have traveled long distances for they were dirty, unkempt, shaggy and waggy. The seats of their trousers, mostly jeans, were browned from grime from far and wide. The men wore week-old beards and the women among them were disheveled, their hair hung on them without style. They giggled loudly, animatedly as though sharing a great joke.
The blue car raced up to the parking lot, Accra dust following in its wake. It screeched to a dramatic stop, millimeters away from the plank barriers. The driver was either showing-off or s\he knew his\her onions well. The door flew open, and a tall, bony lady scrambled out and melodramatically kicked the door shut. She raced to the bar, her populous hair, made up in the style of Whitney Houston when drug has not ravaged her life, flying. From the bar, she collected a glass of what looked like, from where I was sitting, Campari or Mandigo and a bottle of Soda. She made straight for the empty seat beside mine, the hard soles of her shoes abrading the dry ground. The scent of her expensive perfume wafted into my nostril - it had the fragrance of cherries.
"Can I take the seat?" She purred, looking at my face directly while pointing to the empty chair.
“You may." I replied, meeting her very steady gaze.
"Thank you." She crooned. She sat down, taking time to brush the seats of her dress. She mixed her drinks and took a long draught. Placing the glass down, she breathed very deeply, Yoga-style, and apparently felt better. She swept her populous hair back in a deliberate, almost sensuous movement. Although, she cannot exactly be described as crunchingly beautiful, she's nice looking and looked well polished. In the parlance of the fashion-industry, I think she'll be called a sophisticate. She has a slender, almost delicate physique, very flat buttocks, and a long face. Her small breasts were straining against the tight, chic dress she wore.
“Feeling better?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.
“Wow!” She intoned. “I had a thirst that would kill a donkey. Sorry, that phrase is overused, but I cannot come up with a better one.” She pouted her mouth, eye-lashes flashing. She was really over-made-up. Her face was like a rainbow - painted in different colors and shades. And I will be damned if she’s wasn’t flirting very openly.
“Nice wagon.” I said pointing to the car.
She smiled shyly, “Thank you. It’s a prize.” She added as an afterthought.
My interest in the lady was re-kindled. I gaped at her anew. I beckoned to a passing waiter pointing to my empty glass. He gave me a chauvinistic stare and went to an Arab, beefy and hairy like a pig. I ignored the slight.
“A Prize?” I wondered.
She smiled another of her airline-hostess smiles. “Miss Ghana.” She proclaimed watching my face for the inevitable shock.
I kept my face straight, “To what do I owe the privilege of hosting the most beautiful woman in Ghana?”
If she wasn’t so over-processed, the smile would have been Epicurean. “Point of correction, or of order as they say, you’re not hosting me. I paid for my own drink,” She accused, “Secondly, I do not believe in throwing my weight around.” She found herself witty and laughed.
The 007 driving style. The false smiles. The make-up that will fill the faces of many street-walkers, and she doesn’t believe in throwing her weight around. I decided to aggravate her.
“How does it feel to be the most beautiful damsel in Ghana?”
Another skittish smile. A dab at her psychedelic face. “By HIS grace, it is now handleable (sic). It was difficult to cope at the beginning. What with all the attentions! The press, the journalists, the TV lights, the dinner parties, the charity balls, the various visits to this and that do, the family pressures, the peer jealousies, the bad-wishers, the hanger-ons, the loafers who would like to take to take advantage. Not to mention the uncountable Valentines. The beginning was really, really difficult. Thank God, it is now copeable (sic). I can go on, but I will only bore you. I guess you’ve better things to do than listen to the wailing of a Beauty Queen. ”
“Try me.” I urged her on.
She called a passing waitress. My companion was either not well-known or not a regular, the service girl gave an insolent look before ambling to our table. Her tray held in front of her, she hovered over us like an Ijesa debt-collector. She ordered Campari and Soda. The steward was still engaged with the Arab. I asked the service-girl to bring a drink for me. I offered to pay, my table-mate refused, “Let’s go Dutch: You pay yours, I pay mine.”
“How did you get into the Beauty business?”
She laughed. “You made it sound so, how should I put it, lewd?”
“I’m sorry, but my English vocabulary is rather limited. Were you a professional model?”
“My God, no! I was, sorry, I am a student.”
“A student!” I was genuinely shocked.
“You may it sounds so awful. Yes, I was a student. Pedagogy and Child-Psychology. I came into the, I guess I’ve to borrow your expression, ‘Beauty Business’ by accident. I just entered for the fun of it. Imagine my astonishment when I was selected. The biggest trouble now is how to go back to the campus and become an ordinary student again. My term is almost over.”
“Are you regretting it?”
“Hell, no. Sorry, I guess that it is rather un-lady, rude thing to say. No, I don’t regret it one bit. I am having great fun. It has been a tremendous pleasure.” She took her drink from the waitress, mixed and took a sip.
“Pleasure, “ I repeated. ‘Are you happy? There is a big difference between happiness and pleasure.”
“And I thought I was the pedagogue, or should I say the Pedantic.” She found humor in her sarcasm.”
“Beauty doesn’t last forever; knowledge is eternal.”
“You are a nut case.” She seemed genuinely horror-stricken by my presence.
“How so?”
“Most men would be dreaming about how to jump into bed with me, here you are philosophizing about my future. Your concern for my welfare is appreciated, really. You don’t imagine I get to where I am without been able to take care of myself, do you?”
She’s a good actress. No one watching us would imagine her volcanic eruptions. She kept her voice low, her arms swaying as though emphasizing important points.
“There’s more to life than horizontal jogging, aka sex. No, I am not imagining anything. I am just wondering why an intelligent woman will throw away a chance to get a good education for the transient pleasure of pretending to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana.”
She looked as though I’d slapped her. “Pretending.” She cried. “I am not pretending. I won it fair and square.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“I won’t cry.”
“Do you honestly believe yourself to be the most beautiful girl in Ghana. Pretense aside.”
“Pretense,“ she howled like an affronted Imam. “Why do you think that I am pretending? There was a contest and the experts say that I am the most beautiful girl. What have you got against that?”
“The experts,” I sneered. “What makes them the experts?”
“You seemed to be a supreme cynic. If they are not experts, how do they get into conducting the show. How do they get on TV and the newspapers. God, I won the contest fair and square. How dare you?”
“Getting on the TV or into the papers does not an expert make. What qualifies your experts to judge beauty - a most subjective thing in the world? What conceited egos moved your experts to declaring themselves the Solomons of Beauty Contests?”
“Why are you trying to aggravate me? If you are a woman, I’d say that you’re jealous.”
“Aggravating you is not what is on my mind. The whole system stinks, that’s what is getting my goat. See,” I bellowed, shaking with Yoruba emotions. “What’s exacerbating me is the whole gamut called Miss Ghana Show. Don’t take it personal, my dear. I have nothing against you personally. I am grinding an ax against those stupid jackets-and-ties with their moribund colonial mentality. Those who are perpetually under the tutelage of the Aryan Masters. Those who will sell their souls for dollars. Those dirty old men who runs the show are the people vexing me. Dirty old men who should be in bed with their wives staying up night to watch, admire and pass judgments on the legs and buttocks of girls young enough to be their grand-daughters. They and those cultural imperialists, those grinning Aryan bastards whose White Supremacists heads are filled with the notion that any stupid European idea should be universalized. Those colonial tricksters hell-bent on polluting the world with Euro-junks. I blame you not, my dear. You are just a victim, like the rest of us.
“Look,” I cried. Of course, she was looking. “It is not enough for the European to mis-educate us, he has to tell us who our gods are. He has taken it upon himself to lecture us on what political, economic and social systems are good for us. He now has taken over the function of determining for us what our notion of beauty should be. As in everything, the clever Aryan has chosen an image that best approximate himself. Our Jesus must be white. Our socio-political system must be Western. Look at you, the whiteman has decreed that our Beauty Queens must be those who look anything but Africans. You have bleached your skin, your figure is skeletal, you’ve got no backyard - to use our street expression. In fact, were you a fossil, no archaeologist will classify you a Black woman. And on your head has been placed the crown of our Beauty Queen. And your head is swelling with vain-pride. Instead of staying with your studies, you abandoned it to turn yourself into a whore. Whoring with the high and the mighty. What future do you see for yourself, ask those who had gone before you? Of course, they have to justify themselves, the rogues. They have to justify the gigantic fraud they call Miss Ghana Show. They threw you a car, made you attend endless parties, get you into radio stations, put you on the TV, made you smile like a cheap whore and your head is swaying with vanity. Why don’t you look around you? When it comes to beauty, I mean real beauty, however biased our opinions might be, do you think that you can hold a candle to the waitress over there?“ I asked, pointing to the girl who served us drink. The service girl saw us looking at her, said something silently and looked down.
Miss Ghana was astounded. Her face burned with fury. “Perhaps, your daughter or your girl-friend lost the contest. That’s the only thing that could explain your unbridled antagonism. I thought I was with a gentleman. Fancy the put-downs. I didn’t sit down with you in order to allow myself to be insulted like some street-walker. I am not a trollop.”
I was undaunted. My Yoruba blood, incensed by the burning heat and the haughty Beauty Queen, was boiling with rage. I met her gaze with gaze, matched her anger with anger. I was angered by her supercilious manners and was determined to provoke her further. “Me, jealous” I cried. The waitress cut the drift that things were not all jolly with us and ambled closer. She needed some gist to make the gossip circuits. I said nothing to discourage her. “I cherish intelligence far above good looks. I will not be caught dead with a woman stupid enough to participate in that vapid pageant. I will not have a daughter who feels herself justified by some dirty old men. No daughter of mine will expose herself to such public ridicule for the sake of being declared a Beauty by some lubricious, moronic old-men, however long their ties. No daughter of mine will dress up in those filthy, flimsy rags and sauntered up and down, shaking her ass like a low-priced quean to be admire by some mindless, unprincipled, amoral, wanton, coarse, unconscionable sugar-daddies who has lost all claims to human decency. No daughter of mine will have a need for the stamp of approval from some low-keyed, depraved, immoral parent who have time for such debauched, decadent affairs. No offspring of mine will have time for ancient sexual-perverts. I will not sire a daughter who will choose prostitution over a good education. I will have no daughter who will have such low-opinion of herself that what some morally-bankrupt and spiritually-decadent old men think will count for anything with her. I’d like to be the proud father of a daughter who knows that what is in her head is worth more than good looks. You know what is getting my goat?” I asked Miss Ghana.
She gave me a withering look, threw a dirty look at the waitress who ambulated away quietly. “I thought you were never going to stop your insults.”
“What’s is irksome is that otherwise intelligent ladies like yourself, on whom parents and society has expended so much energies, financial and otherwise, should allow themselves to be bamboozled by cheap vain-glories and all the show-biz glitters to abandon their studies. Once again, the whiteman has succeeded in turning Africans into a caricature of himself. Have you read ‘Soul on Ice?’
Miss Ghana pouted her mouth, “No. Why?”
“I was just reminded of what Eldridge Cleaver wrote about the white man and his woman. The white man is launching an assault to turn our women into what he’s made of his own woman.”
“And that is?”
“According to Cleaver, ‘The white man has turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot and place her on a pedestal.’”
Monday, May 23, 2011
Killing Osama, Again!
Hello...
Hello, yes. Who is calling?
Hello. Femi, wake up, are you still asleep?
Yes, can't you see what time it is? Why shouldn't I be asleep?
Ah, my friend, get up. How can you sleep at a time like this?
What happened, what time like this are we talking about?
You can't be serious, Femi. Don't tell me you can sleep at a momentous, historic time like this. I am dying of pure excitement. I could die now and go straight to heaven and feel very fulfilled. Femi, this is too good to be true. What! Don't tell me that you've not heard the good tiding?
Don't tell me that you woke me up to peddle your version of piety. Let me get back to my sleep. Some of us have to earn our daily bread.
Come on, man. Turn your TV on and see and hear the glorious news.
What, Jesus came back?
Don't be blasphemous, my friend. They got him!
Whom did they get? Who got whom?
Turn on the TV, Femi, and stop asking silly questions. CNN, BBC, FOX, al-Jazeera, Deutche Welle, France, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso, every television station in the world is running live commentaries, and you're sleeping. I am lucky that I have this satellite thing; I am switching channels like crazy.
I don't have a television, I told you that several times.
Yeah, I forgot you live your hermitic lifestyle. Now you have missed the biggest news of the century.
Come on, tell me now. They got whom?
It is now you want to know? American Special Forces have got their man...and in Pakistan, of all places.
I thought they always got their man. Whom did they get this time around?
Don't be daft, my friend. Who have they spent the past ten years searching for? Who is the world's Terrorist Numero Uno?
I would say Tony Blair or George Bush, Jr. Now, we can add King Sarkozy and maybe Emperor Obama.
You really think that this is funny or that it's time for wise-cracking?
No, I am not wise-cracking; those guys top my list of wanted terrorists.
Who cares about your puny and insignificant list? Who cares about any list you care to draw up?
So, now that you have managed to disturb my sleep, can you tell me what all the excitement is about?
Osama bin Laden is dead. He has been killed in Pakistan. He was killed in "Operation Geronimo" by the US SEALs in Abbottabad, near Islamabad.
Says who?
The news circulated for hours but now we have heard from the horse's mouth. President Obama just gave a speech at the White House. He has confirmed the deed. Wow, the man is good. The delivery was flawless. A real Commander in Chief! Do you know what Geronimo means?
How would I know and why should I care?
Geronimo is a Chiricahua Apache leader who resisted the US government policy to consolidate his people on reservations and led series of raids against Mexican and American settlements in the Southwest. Ah, I Googled it up, my friend.
Hmmmm.
For your information, the terrorist leader was killed in a lavish mansion near a huge military base. Americans are good, terribly good. We need their type of "can-do" spirit in Africa. Wow!
Hmmmm.
Is that all you have to say, hmmmm? Are you not going to join in the huge celebration? The world has seen the end of a mass murderer! Crowds have gathered and they are dancing around the White House and all the streets of America. America feels tall and proud as it rightly should. This is a good time to be an American.
Hmmmm.
Come on, Femi; learn to give credit where it is due. I know you don't like America, but at least on this occasion they did the world a tremendous good.
Hmmmm.
Why all the hmmmms, Femi?
I was just wondering how many times you can kill a man...
readmore.
Hello, yes. Who is calling?
Hello. Femi, wake up, are you still asleep?
Yes, can't you see what time it is? Why shouldn't I be asleep?
Ah, my friend, get up. How can you sleep at a time like this?
What happened, what time like this are we talking about?
You can't be serious, Femi. Don't tell me you can sleep at a momentous, historic time like this. I am dying of pure excitement. I could die now and go straight to heaven and feel very fulfilled. Femi, this is too good to be true. What! Don't tell me that you've not heard the good tiding?
Don't tell me that you woke me up to peddle your version of piety. Let me get back to my sleep. Some of us have to earn our daily bread.
Come on, man. Turn your TV on and see and hear the glorious news.
What, Jesus came back?
Don't be blasphemous, my friend. They got him!
Whom did they get? Who got whom?
Turn on the TV, Femi, and stop asking silly questions. CNN, BBC, FOX, al-Jazeera, Deutche Welle, France, China, Ghana, Burkina Faso, every television station in the world is running live commentaries, and you're sleeping. I am lucky that I have this satellite thing; I am switching channels like crazy.
I don't have a television, I told you that several times.
Yeah, I forgot you live your hermitic lifestyle. Now you have missed the biggest news of the century.
Come on, tell me now. They got whom?
It is now you want to know? American Special Forces have got their man...and in Pakistan, of all places.
I thought they always got their man. Whom did they get this time around?
Don't be daft, my friend. Who have they spent the past ten years searching for? Who is the world's Terrorist Numero Uno?
I would say Tony Blair or George Bush, Jr. Now, we can add King Sarkozy and maybe Emperor Obama.
You really think that this is funny or that it's time for wise-cracking?
No, I am not wise-cracking; those guys top my list of wanted terrorists.
Who cares about your puny and insignificant list? Who cares about any list you care to draw up?
So, now that you have managed to disturb my sleep, can you tell me what all the excitement is about?
Osama bin Laden is dead. He has been killed in Pakistan. He was killed in "Operation Geronimo" by the US SEALs in Abbottabad, near Islamabad.
Says who?
The news circulated for hours but now we have heard from the horse's mouth. President Obama just gave a speech at the White House. He has confirmed the deed. Wow, the man is good. The delivery was flawless. A real Commander in Chief! Do you know what Geronimo means?
How would I know and why should I care?
Geronimo is a Chiricahua Apache leader who resisted the US government policy to consolidate his people on reservations and led series of raids against Mexican and American settlements in the Southwest. Ah, I Googled it up, my friend.
Hmmmm.
For your information, the terrorist leader was killed in a lavish mansion near a huge military base. Americans are good, terribly good. We need their type of "can-do" spirit in Africa. Wow!
Hmmmm.
Is that all you have to say, hmmmm? Are you not going to join in the huge celebration? The world has seen the end of a mass murderer! Crowds have gathered and they are dancing around the White House and all the streets of America. America feels tall and proud as it rightly should. This is a good time to be an American.
Hmmmm.
Come on, Femi; learn to give credit where it is due. I know you don't like America, but at least on this occasion they did the world a tremendous good.
Hmmmm.
Why all the hmmmms, Femi?
I was just wondering how many times you can kill a man...
readmore.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Mills Gambit
"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent." – Nicole Rae Lewis
“If you bite the hands that feed you, you will go hungry.” – African proverb.
The supreme military strategist, Tsun tzu, gave this advice: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”
It is not an advice the president, Professor John Atta Mills, seems to have ever heard. Whatever his other attributes, no one can accuse the president of being a consummate politico, a decisive leader, a brilliant political Strategist or even a Tactician.
It is said that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything. It is pretty difficult to know what president Mills stands for. Two and half years into his presidency, the professor has not come out to boldly articulate his vision for his nation or his party.
The president looks increasingly like a man who is just swimming with the current.
Not being able to able to rise above the common hoipoloi is not the hallmark of a true leader.
Whatever one says about presidents President John Jerry Rawlings and President John Kufuor, they are decisive leaders. It is difficult to imagine either man crying himself hoarse to collect his party’s nomination paper. It is equally difficult to imagine someone having the temerity to challenge them for supremacy in the party they led. The image of an Executive President hectoring Customs and Excise officials is also not very re-assuring.
If our good-natured, humble, god-fearing president commands no respect within his own political party, how does he hope to be respected in the country at large?
The honest truth is that the president is being badly served by those close to him and has his ears. Increasingly president Mills behave and look more like the former Nigerian President, Shehu Shagari.
Like Professor Mills, Shagari was touted as a humble, god-fearing and deeply religious man. Whilst all these could be useful attributes in someone aspiring to a position in the priesthood, they are hardly sufficient in the rough and tumble, shark-infested world of modern politics where it is all about barracuda eating the small fishes.
It is not the ideal; it just happens to be that way.
The problem with Shehu Shagari, and also increasingly with president Mills, is that both are men of very little vision or competence in public administration, and very sadly they surrounded themselves with sycophantic advisers, who refused to tell them unalloyed truth. Both are not leaders who could galvanise men into greater heights.
In countries like the US with very strong national institutions, bumblers like Bush jr. can ramble their ways through their eight years term, but a country like Ghana needs a confident, decisive, inspired and inspiring leader. It needs a leader with both passion and vision.
President Mills ill-articulated Better Ghana Agenda contains no vision to move the country forward and not even his most partisan supporter can accuse the president of being a passionate man.
Like President Mills, Shagari advisers also confused meaningless perambulations for great momentum. While the lots of Nigerians sank into the abyss, Shagari traveled around the world and embarked of sod-cutting and other exercises that should not at all engage presidential attentions.
To cap it, Shagari officials were insanely corrupt. Whilst Shagari pontificated about good governance and a fight against corruption, his officials looted the treasury to extent that left Nigerians stupefied. Many Nigerians danced on the streets when General Buhari and co terminated the kleptomaniac rule of Shagari on 31, December 1993.
President Mills cannot claim to be unaware of the monumental rot that is taking place under his watch. He shouldn’t just glibly dismiss the allegations, some of them well-documented, of corruptions against his officials.
President Mills, luckily, is not likely to meet Shagari’s fate; he nevertheless faces challenges of almost cosmic proportions.
On July 8, his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will organize a congress to its elect officials and presidential candidate for the 2011 elections.
This is serious business which also represents a gross slap in the face for Professor Mills. His is the ruling party and to have someone within the party challenging his candidacy is serious indictment on his type of leadership.
Whatever the outcome on 8 July, 2011 NDC elections, president Mills is not going to come out smelling like roses. It is for the president a situation of head he loses, tail he cannot win?
Although national elections are still more than a year away and that a day is eternity in politics, but by allowing the situation within his party to deteriorate to the extent that he was openly challenged leaves open several questions about competence, judgments and a serious question mark on the president’s political astuteness.
An astute politician is one with good radar to detect potential troubles and nip them in the bud before they turn to calamity. This was not the case with President John Atta Mills.
Everyone knew that all is not well within the NDC, and for the president to have left it unattended leaves serious question mark on his political judgment.
Surrounding himself with sycophantic ‘yes-men’ also reveals the president as a man with deep character flaw. Men with self-confidence hardly have time for feeble-minded palace jesters.
Whatever we think of him, President John Jerry Rawlings is a titan of both the Ghanaian and NDC political landscape. To have conspired to marginalized and antagonized such a man rather than seek ways to accommodate and massage his ego leaves the president’s political judgment open to serious questions.
There is no way that President Mills will come out of the congress looking good. And should he emerge victorious, it will be a pyrrhic victory as the Friend of Nana Konadu agyemang-Rawling (FONKAR) faction in his party is sufficiently aggrieved to sabotage his re-election efforts.
All these are sweet music to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
For the FONKAR group, the president has committed the gravest sins in politics: betrayal and ingratitude. Their belief that the president was ‘Rawlings –made,’ was valid as far as they are concerned. And to have him treat their hero with such huge disdain and ridicule is a sacrilege the President John Jerry Rawlings partisans are not likely to forget in a hurry.
The spectacle of the president deploying the likes of Ablakwa to flay President John Jerry Rawlings is enough to send the FONKAR group ballistic and rumours are already rife that the group would leave the NDC should the president wins.
Not to be discounted is the perceived marginalisation of the ‘foot soldiers’ that helped the NDC prosecute the electioneering war.
The foot soldiers consider the president and his team a bunch of ingrates. The insults rained upon them by member of the government and threats to ‘deal’ with them are sufficient to move the foot soldiers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
There are also those within the NDC that believe that the monumental corruption in the Mills administration has betrayed the core principles of their party. They are not likely to be moved by from their position that their party needs a change in its leadership.
For all these factions within the NDC, nothing but a massive purge of their party will do after the congress. We might see enough blood-letting on 8 July 2011 to make Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives look like a child’s play.
Then there is the big question of why? Why did president Atta Mills allowed the situation in his party descend to this gutter level? Why didn’t the elders of the party use internal party structures to help stabilized the situation before it got out of hand?
It would have helped if the president has come out openly to fight the Rawlingses and state his case against them robustly and clearly.
This would have endeared him greatly to a large section of the populace who are fed up with the Rawlingses and would love to see a courageous president that is proving to be his own man.
But, alas, the President refused to show his face. He allowed political charlatans and opportunists like Ablakwa, Haruna Iddrisu, Boateng and his other minions to do his dirty works for him.
The question is: which of these stomach politicians count for anything in Ghana politics? Who born dog, indeed!
When it matters the most, President Mills refused to come out swinging and this leaves him open to ridicule as a coward. Little wonder the cartoonist had field day caricaturing him as a mindless child.
With the authority of his office as the Executive President, the president is invested with awesome power and authority to firmly stamp his authority on the nation and, especially, on his party. He’s the leader of the party, for crying out loud!
President Mills failed to do so and his advisors thought the best way to sell him is to have him travel across the land cutting sods here and there like a common mason!
The presidential time should be more productively deployed than having him cutting sod for bore-holes, toilets and eateries at universities.
A president can be excused if he’s shown cutting sods for large-scale agricultural project, big industries but lavatories, ah - that’s not something that should engage the attention of even a minister!
In July last year, I wrote a piece entitled, ‘President John Jerry Rawlings is getting his comeuppance,” http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com/2010/07/rawlings-is-getting-his-comeuppance.html.
Here is an excerpt: “Post mortem: Every patriotic of Ghana should be concerned about the inner wrangling in the ruling party. No, it has nothing to do with whether or not we support one faction or the other. Self-interest makes it imperative for us to show our concerns. As the party entrusted with running the affairs of our nation, it is our concern to know what is going on.
President Mills is a human being and according to biologists the first concern of any organism is self-preservation. Whatever he professes Professor Mills is a politician, period. He cannot pretend not to be concerned about his re-election. This concern will, of course, translate into ensuring that he uses some of his time on tackling the problems besetting his party. He knows that he cannot launch a new party and hope to win the next election. It is also inconceivable that he will join the NPP or any other party. So, he‘s stuck with his NDC party. Given the formidable opposition of the Rawlingses (they won quite a sizable chunk of the party executive posts contested at Tamale), they cannot be discounted.
All these mean that our president will be a very worried man, indeed. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that any time our president spends on intra-party squabbling is time that could have been put into productive use in solving some of the problems facing our nation.
This precisely is the President Mills Dilemma.
How did President Mills get himself into this fine mess? It’s difficult to imagine President Rawlings or even President Kufuor facing the same problem in their parties.
Unlike President Mills, both men do not come across as one whose authority is open to questioning. Methinks that is the hallmark of a true leader.
Leaving the Young Turks (Rawlings ‘greedy bastards’) in his party to fight his battle for him also portrays the president as a coward.
So what are the options open to him? Methinks that he should come out boldly and confront the problem head-on. He should let one and all know where he stood on any of the issues confronting his leadership style and the way forward for the party. He has the whole authority of his office to back him up; it is time he uses it. These are not the times to be meek; these are occasions for decisiveness.
It is said that if you do not stand for something, you will fall for everything. As things stood, no one knows where our president stood. He needs to come out candidly and forcefully to declare his stand. Anything less would not jell.
Alas, I am not his advisor!
“If you bite the hands that feed you, you will go hungry.” – African proverb.
The supreme military strategist, Tsun tzu, gave this advice: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”
It is not an advice the president, Professor John Atta Mills, seems to have ever heard. Whatever his other attributes, no one can accuse the president of being a consummate politico, a decisive leader, a brilliant political Strategist or even a Tactician.
It is said that if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything. It is pretty difficult to know what president Mills stands for. Two and half years into his presidency, the professor has not come out to boldly articulate his vision for his nation or his party.
The president looks increasingly like a man who is just swimming with the current.
Not being able to able to rise above the common hoipoloi is not the hallmark of a true leader.
Whatever one says about presidents President John Jerry Rawlings and President John Kufuor, they are decisive leaders. It is difficult to imagine either man crying himself hoarse to collect his party’s nomination paper. It is equally difficult to imagine someone having the temerity to challenge them for supremacy in the party they led. The image of an Executive President hectoring Customs and Excise officials is also not very re-assuring.
If our good-natured, humble, god-fearing president commands no respect within his own political party, how does he hope to be respected in the country at large?
The honest truth is that the president is being badly served by those close to him and has his ears. Increasingly president Mills behave and look more like the former Nigerian President, Shehu Shagari.
Like Professor Mills, Shagari was touted as a humble, god-fearing and deeply religious man. Whilst all these could be useful attributes in someone aspiring to a position in the priesthood, they are hardly sufficient in the rough and tumble, shark-infested world of modern politics where it is all about barracuda eating the small fishes.
It is not the ideal; it just happens to be that way.
The problem with Shehu Shagari, and also increasingly with president Mills, is that both are men of very little vision or competence in public administration, and very sadly they surrounded themselves with sycophantic advisers, who refused to tell them unalloyed truth. Both are not leaders who could galvanise men into greater heights.
In countries like the US with very strong national institutions, bumblers like Bush jr. can ramble their ways through their eight years term, but a country like Ghana needs a confident, decisive, inspired and inspiring leader. It needs a leader with both passion and vision.
President Mills ill-articulated Better Ghana Agenda contains no vision to move the country forward and not even his most partisan supporter can accuse the president of being a passionate man.
Like President Mills, Shagari advisers also confused meaningless perambulations for great momentum. While the lots of Nigerians sank into the abyss, Shagari traveled around the world and embarked of sod-cutting and other exercises that should not at all engage presidential attentions.
To cap it, Shagari officials were insanely corrupt. Whilst Shagari pontificated about good governance and a fight against corruption, his officials looted the treasury to extent that left Nigerians stupefied. Many Nigerians danced on the streets when General Buhari and co terminated the kleptomaniac rule of Shagari on 31, December 1993.
President Mills cannot claim to be unaware of the monumental rot that is taking place under his watch. He shouldn’t just glibly dismiss the allegations, some of them well-documented, of corruptions against his officials.
President Mills, luckily, is not likely to meet Shagari’s fate; he nevertheless faces challenges of almost cosmic proportions.
On July 8, his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will organize a congress to its elect officials and presidential candidate for the 2011 elections.
This is serious business which also represents a gross slap in the face for Professor Mills. His is the ruling party and to have someone within the party challenging his candidacy is serious indictment on his type of leadership.
Whatever the outcome on 8 July, 2011 NDC elections, president Mills is not going to come out smelling like roses. It is for the president a situation of head he loses, tail he cannot win?
Although national elections are still more than a year away and that a day is eternity in politics, but by allowing the situation within his party to deteriorate to the extent that he was openly challenged leaves open several questions about competence, judgments and a serious question mark on the president’s political astuteness.
An astute politician is one with good radar to detect potential troubles and nip them in the bud before they turn to calamity. This was not the case with President John Atta Mills.
Everyone knew that all is not well within the NDC, and for the president to have left it unattended leaves serious question mark on his political judgment.
Surrounding himself with sycophantic ‘yes-men’ also reveals the president as a man with deep character flaw. Men with self-confidence hardly have time for feeble-minded palace jesters.
Whatever we think of him, President John Jerry Rawlings is a titan of both the Ghanaian and NDC political landscape. To have conspired to marginalized and antagonized such a man rather than seek ways to accommodate and massage his ego leaves the president’s political judgment open to serious questions.
There is no way that President Mills will come out of the congress looking good. And should he emerge victorious, it will be a pyrrhic victory as the Friend of Nana Konadu agyemang-Rawling (FONKAR) faction in his party is sufficiently aggrieved to sabotage his re-election efforts.
All these are sweet music to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
For the FONKAR group, the president has committed the gravest sins in politics: betrayal and ingratitude. Their belief that the president was ‘Rawlings –made,’ was valid as far as they are concerned. And to have him treat their hero with such huge disdain and ridicule is a sacrilege the President John Jerry Rawlings partisans are not likely to forget in a hurry.
The spectacle of the president deploying the likes of Ablakwa to flay President John Jerry Rawlings is enough to send the FONKAR group ballistic and rumours are already rife that the group would leave the NDC should the president wins.
Not to be discounted is the perceived marginalisation of the ‘foot soldiers’ that helped the NDC prosecute the electioneering war.
The foot soldiers consider the president and his team a bunch of ingrates. The insults rained upon them by member of the government and threats to ‘deal’ with them are sufficient to move the foot soldiers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
There are also those within the NDC that believe that the monumental corruption in the Mills administration has betrayed the core principles of their party. They are not likely to be moved by from their position that their party needs a change in its leadership.
For all these factions within the NDC, nothing but a massive purge of their party will do after the congress. We might see enough blood-letting on 8 July 2011 to make Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives look like a child’s play.
Then there is the big question of why? Why did president Atta Mills allowed the situation in his party descend to this gutter level? Why didn’t the elders of the party use internal party structures to help stabilized the situation before it got out of hand?
It would have helped if the president has come out openly to fight the Rawlingses and state his case against them robustly and clearly.
This would have endeared him greatly to a large section of the populace who are fed up with the Rawlingses and would love to see a courageous president that is proving to be his own man.
But, alas, the President refused to show his face. He allowed political charlatans and opportunists like Ablakwa, Haruna Iddrisu, Boateng and his other minions to do his dirty works for him.
The question is: which of these stomach politicians count for anything in Ghana politics? Who born dog, indeed!
When it matters the most, President Mills refused to come out swinging and this leaves him open to ridicule as a coward. Little wonder the cartoonist had field day caricaturing him as a mindless child.
With the authority of his office as the Executive President, the president is invested with awesome power and authority to firmly stamp his authority on the nation and, especially, on his party. He’s the leader of the party, for crying out loud!
President Mills failed to do so and his advisors thought the best way to sell him is to have him travel across the land cutting sods here and there like a common mason!
The presidential time should be more productively deployed than having him cutting sod for bore-holes, toilets and eateries at universities.
A president can be excused if he’s shown cutting sods for large-scale agricultural project, big industries but lavatories, ah - that’s not something that should engage the attention of even a minister!
In July last year, I wrote a piece entitled, ‘President John Jerry Rawlings is getting his comeuppance,” http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com/2010/07/rawlings-is-getting-his-comeuppance.html.
Here is an excerpt: “Post mortem: Every patriotic of Ghana should be concerned about the inner wrangling in the ruling party. No, it has nothing to do with whether or not we support one faction or the other. Self-interest makes it imperative for us to show our concerns. As the party entrusted with running the affairs of our nation, it is our concern to know what is going on.
President Mills is a human being and according to biologists the first concern of any organism is self-preservation. Whatever he professes Professor Mills is a politician, period. He cannot pretend not to be concerned about his re-election. This concern will, of course, translate into ensuring that he uses some of his time on tackling the problems besetting his party. He knows that he cannot launch a new party and hope to win the next election. It is also inconceivable that he will join the NPP or any other party. So, he‘s stuck with his NDC party. Given the formidable opposition of the Rawlingses (they won quite a sizable chunk of the party executive posts contested at Tamale), they cannot be discounted.
All these mean that our president will be a very worried man, indeed. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that any time our president spends on intra-party squabbling is time that could have been put into productive use in solving some of the problems facing our nation.
This precisely is the President Mills Dilemma.
How did President Mills get himself into this fine mess? It’s difficult to imagine President Rawlings or even President Kufuor facing the same problem in their parties.
Unlike President Mills, both men do not come across as one whose authority is open to questioning. Methinks that is the hallmark of a true leader.
Leaving the Young Turks (Rawlings ‘greedy bastards’) in his party to fight his battle for him also portrays the president as a coward.
So what are the options open to him? Methinks that he should come out boldly and confront the problem head-on. He should let one and all know where he stood on any of the issues confronting his leadership style and the way forward for the party. He has the whole authority of his office to back him up; it is time he uses it. These are not the times to be meek; these are occasions for decisiveness.
It is said that if you do not stand for something, you will fall for everything. As things stood, no one knows where our president stood. He needs to come out candidly and forcefully to declare his stand. Anything less would not jell.
Alas, I am not his advisor!
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